The Witcher - Previews @ GameBanshee, Shacknews

October 20th, 2007, 02:05

Two new previews of The Witcher are out. Let's take serious quote from GameBanshee who are unashamedly fans:

Before going any further, let me first just say that I have no idea why the game was ever coined as an "action RPG." Sure, the combat requires some (carefully timed) mouse clicking, but the team was clearly aiming for a classic role-playing experience. This is a story-driven game with a significant amount of dialogue, a multitude of quests, a surprisingly thorough and intricate journal system, and a vast assortment of character development options. You have to put a considerable amount of thought into many of the choices you make in the game, so hopefully nobody out there is expecting a Diablo clone or something similar from The Witcher. If so, scratch the game off your list and save yourself some cash and the subsequent disappointment. If a classic single-player CRPG experience is exactly what you're looking for, then you're in luck.

After saving one woman from a band of would-be rapists, I'm hit with a quest to run her back across town to her house, protecting her from roving helldogs in the process. All the way, she's teasing me with promises: "Hustlers always get rewarded, hee hee." Yeah.
"I live with my grandma. I'd rather not shock her," she says on arrival. Typical. At this point I figure the jig is up—Game Over—which is just when my sly character suggests meeting the next day, at a secluded mill down the road. At this point I'm talking to the screen: "Geralt, you cheeky bastard."
"You bring the wine, I'll bring the food," she replies, prompting a quest to find a bottle of wine in time for the rendezvous. Which I do, for science, and inevitably all of this triggers a cutscene.
"Something haunts the old mill tonight," says one nearby guard.
"We should engage a witcher or some other magician to look into it," replies his friend.
"Never around when they're needed, they are."

"Obviously, the system I quoted above is on the high end, so I also loaded the game on my nearly three-year-old Windows XP system with an FX-57 processor and a GeForce 7800GTX. The game still ran great using an above average resolution of 1920x1200 and mid-range graphical settings, which is good to know for those of you planning to install the game on an older system."

Yes!

EDIT:
"Something haunts the old mill tonight," says one nearby guard.
"We should engage a witcher or some other magician to look into it," replies his friend.
"Never around when they're needed, they are."

Wow, the quoted Shacknews bit is probably the best I've ever heard, read or seen in a cRPG in terms of immersing us, palyers, in the stroy and the world. Masterfully done, can't wait to get my hands on this title! And Geralt's replies are simply soooo… kick-ass!

Hey, when Buck states in the GB review, getting two levels and has six tokens, is this an accurate, average number of tokens per level, three?

Apologizes for getting geeky and trying to plan out how many tokens versus the 270 (if I understood 15 skill trees and 18 choices per skill tree), skill choices, anyone know about how many levels are possible during the course of the game?

— Trust me, most of the names I have been called you can't translate in any language…they're not even real words as much as a succession of violent images.

You get 3x bronze tokens for every level for around 15-20 hours gameplay. After that (level 12? Can't remember accurately), you get 3x bronze and 1x silver. Obviously at some point you will get gold.

I've maxed a good chunk of the bronze skills, but the higher ones really start to specialise with only one silver per level. I can't tell you how the end-game pans out but I suspect bronze will be maxed, a smattering of silvers and only a handful of gold (?). No idea how many levels. Based on where I think I am and the lvl 15 character I have, 45+? Really guessing, though.